Friday, April 22, 2005

Elections, Present and Future

So, I think it's time to address our glorious PM's naked begging for a chance to prove his, um, well, whatever it is he has to prove.

Why? Why should we give the Liberals further chances? Is there anyone in the country who believes there is even the faintest hope that the Gomery inquiry will turn up some exonerating evidence that mitigates the evidence we've already heard?

I'll stop now.

Back to the present, the provincial election proceeds, and the undramatic reelection of the Liberals should go off without a hitch. The real interest will be in whether the BC-STV proposal is favoured. For myself, I like it a lot. I think it straddles a solid line between generating a result proportional to actual vote-casting, and avoiding the dread terror of centralized party lists and no local representation (or to put it another way, if the Greens are fer it, then I'm agin' it).

Nobody in my family so far seems to agree. The basic arguments seem to be that BC-STV is complicated and that larger ridings are bad.

Let me say this: I concede both points. But neither issue is fatal. Larger, but not impossibly large ridings. And I think the world will learn to rank candidates in order. I hope that's possible, anyway.